Silence speaks volumes, and Mike Pence can testify to that. In his address to a security conference in Munich Friday, Pence said, “I bring greetings from the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump” — and the silence was deafening. Pence stood there, like a deer caught in the headlights for about five seconds, before carrying on. Addressing U.S. allies at the Munich Security Conference, Mike Pence is met with silence as he tells the audience: "I bring greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump." pic.twitter.com/yr7SNVhCVf — Axios (@axios) February 16, 2019 Trump has already horrified our allies abroad, especially in NATO, which he portrays as a bunch of deadbeats. Pence addressed that cheery topic, and then went on to antagonize the Chinese. The Hill: “The United States expects every NATO member to put in place a credible plan to meet the 2 percent threshold. And, by 2024, we expect all our allies to invest 20 percent of defense spending on procurement,” he said. Pence on Friday also blasted China and Russia in front of delegations from both countries “Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has also made it clear that China must address the longstanding issues of intellectual-property theft, forced technology transfer, and other structural issues in China that have placed a burden on our economy and on economies around the world,” he said. Pence later noted the U.S.’s move to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The decision to withdraw has triggered questions about the potential impact on European security and the global strategic environment amid weakened U.S.–Russia relations. Mike Pence, out there in the world, alienating our allies, giving our enemies a good laugh. Swell.

Please stop, news cycle. Please just stop.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize last autumn after receiving a request from the U.S. government to do so,...

In the last several days you may have seen brief clips of footage from the just-ended Munich Security Conference, specifically two particular moments, one in which a Trump-toadying Vice President Mike Pence is met...

So says Andrew McCabe in his book as told to him by an FBI agent present in a July 2017 intel briefing in the White House. The Vox article that points to the book passage, and McCabe’s interview with Lawrence O’Donnell, during which he repeated the claim, points out that McCabe has had trouble with telling the whole truth on a couple of occasions, but I think this was right in character for the Hair Fuhrer: “McCabe details what an FBI agent told him directly after briefing Trump. According to McCabe’s telling, the president reportedly derailed the meeting, which was supposed to be about Russian spies, by making unrelated comments about North Korea and other countries. Then Trump brought up Venezuela: “That’s the country we should be going to war with,” Trump said, according to McCabe’s recounting. “They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” McCabe expanded on this during a Tuesday night interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: “The president’s remarks to the room were along the lines of ‘I don’t understand why we’re not looking at Venezuela. Why are we not at war with Venezuela?’” The Trump administration keeps saying “all options are on the table” when it comes to Venezuela, meaning a military option is still feasible. While it’s unlikely, it sure seems that war with Venezuela has been on the president’s mind for years — and it may be because he wants the oil.” Nothing so excites a grifter and con artist quite so much as the prospect of acquiring something that belongs to someone else with little or no effort on their own part. And what is truly frightening about this *Resident is that armed with foreknowledge of an impending conflict his reptilian brain would be working overtime on ways that he could gain financially from the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Venezuelans.

The revelations and accusations made by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last week, that he was the target of blackmail—possibly politically driven—from National Enquirer head David Pecker and the tabloid’s publisher, American Media, Inc., has led to new insights into...

Anybody who has ever thrown a birthday party for a kid knows that there are two basic forms of entertainment. There are clowns, and then there are magicians. Donald Trump is a true cross over, a magician clown. He lumbers around the yard with his big flopping feet, knocking over the folding table with the cake on it, while he makes a cute little bunny out of a long pink balloon, which somehow or other ends up with a hard on on it. Donald Trump has been pretty transparent since day one in regards to his response to problems with his Presidency or his administration. That’s Trump the magician. Throw a handful of sparkling pixie dust into the air to attract attention, while your other hand puts the rabbit into the hat. But because Trump is a clown, he throws the damn pixie dust directly over the hat. Every time. Never has Trump needed a major distraction more than right now. His approval numbers are in the toilet, and there’s a hand on the pull chain. People are finally seeing the bait-and-switch in his tax cut dodge with lower IRS refunds, and he’s taking friendly fire from the right wing media over the wall. Oh yeah, and Robert Mueller is making his Cornholeone family look more like the “Kid Sally” Palumbo family in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. There is one whopping distraction required here. For a while there, sane minds worried that he would actively try to engineer a war with North Korea if he were backed far enough into a corner, the ultimate distraction. But no, as long as in Dung Pil keeps sending His Lowness 3’x4’ Valentines cards hand delivered by an envoy, they’re golden. Then people worried that he would manufacture an incident to enable him to go big into Syria. But Vlad the Imp shook a finger and made tsk-tsk-tsk noises, so that is now one of the few options in Trumpmenistan that is actually “off of the table.” Which leaves us with Iran. Trump has been laying the groundwork for a pissing contest with Iran for quite a while now. All the way back when he was a candidate, he slammed the Iran nuclear deal, but that was back when Trump honestly thought that whatever he said wouldn’t matter in the long run. It was just his way of raining on Baravk Obama’s parade for being able to craft a goddamn deal that actually worked. Once he got elected, common sense and realpolitik never entered into the equation, he had a reputation of “excellence in ignorance” to live up to. He wiped his ass with the Iran nuclear deal and threw it into the toilet, and then he unilaterally restored sanctions on Iran, doing everything in his power to poke the tiger with a stick, just to prove that his obstinance was as overpowering as his stupidity. For quite a while, none of this mattered as much, for one simple reason. That’s because “Mad Dog” Jim Mattis had the keys to Donald Trump’s cage. Trump could howl at the moon all he wanted, but it was ultimately Mattis who would decide whether or not to let slip the dogs of war. But now Mattis is gone, and The $1 Store Caligula has a chickenhawk piece of shit like John […]

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